The sudden buzz in the AI field and the predictions of what it can do has been a storm in the recent days. The news which carried most of the weightage was about replacing jobs currently held by humans by AI. This is a general trend in the capitalist societies, because the ones who could try on new tech is the one with the access and control to capital, who can hire either tech or labour.

So the conversations are about how to create a cheaper present and save capital instead of dreaming up newer future with the advancements. What job does a new technology disrupt? Different technologies disrupted different jobs over time, generally the one that is disrupted has been a hard to learn skill. Before the emails, and messaging became ubiquitous; a career as a typist made a lot of sense. That job quickly became redundant with word processors giving formatting & correcting abilities which encouraged a lot of DIY.

I have a personal example when I was a billboard maker during my college days. We were reliant on artists for painting billboards and getting their time and negotiating the rates were quite difficult. Within a span of a year or two I witnessed computers becoming very cheap and desktop publishing becoming more common. All of a sudden we were able to DIY entire design in a PC, get feedback from customer and quickly iterate, deliver it in a record amount of time compared to hand painted billboards.

The crux of disruptions have always been DIY or cheap automation. If we see from that point of view, what executives are dreaming of a cheaper present in the software industry by replacing programmers with AI is not feasible, instead it is the other way around. Programmers are mere translators of business solution into what a computer can understand. Even with AI, executives won’t be having the patience or the skill to get the AI to understand and solve their business problems through technical solutions. Using AI will either become a higher order programming or augmentation to programming in the near term.

On the other hand AI will provide abilities of a CFO, CEO, COO and other executives in a cost effective, time efficient way to a board or a young inexperienced executive, who can compete so easily with veteran executives by teaming up with AI. It is this position that is under risk due to AI than the run of the mill programming jobs who just needs to skill up on how to team up with AI or equip AI. That is the new future we are heading towards.

My grandfather never borrowed for anything. His guiding lines for me were – Using borrowed money is like fuelling the fire using hay, it burns fast and gets consumed quickly but when we want to repay we will be paying in firewood for the same volume of hay which could have served us much more. Another mentor quoted a text when I wanted to buy a flashy car much in my early career – We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.

Both those texts are my guiding lines for debt management now, but adopted it much later when I learnt it the hard way. Two of the biggest purchases in one’s life, a house and a car, often don’t stop at needs but end up as a status symbol. People love to show that they have arrived and achieved. In reality no house or car is big or luxurious enough over time. So people go all out and buy things that are not affordable. Loans were initially meant to lent out to people seeking business capital. Those were risky so banks turned to milk the retail borrowers – ‘us’. Affordable loans are oxymorons, if you are going for a loan to buy something then you cannot afford it.

Negotiating for big purchases with cash in hand vs taking loans has a big difference. We are hard on our future selves but care for who we are today so the cash in hand looks heavier and hard earned while the loan repayments broken down over the months in the future looks small and affordable; inflating the overall demand and reducing the willingness to negotiate.

When we buy larger than our needs, we commit to a monthly outflow which we cannot afford to skip because it will bite back with more penalties. This is the single biggest factor which contributes to workplace stress; people put up with toxic work cultures, long working hours and bad bosses in the fear of losing the lifestyle they signed into.

On the contrary, if we save up for paying the big purchases we will negotiate hard with the money in hand, we will not be a victim to the need of hefty monthly payments, which gives the clarity of thoughts to take crucial career decisions. You can buy a dream house by SIP route within 7-8 years of saving the same money that we will be paying for 20 years for a home loan. Once I was in a car showroom where I observed a guy talking to the salesman for the model he wanted.

Salesman: Please let me know what is your monthly salary, I will let you know which car you will be sanctioned?

Buyer: I wanted the top end model, in that specific color and rims.

Salesman: In order to proceed I need to know your ability to pay month on month, I can work out the interest rates and tenure:

Buyer: Gives a cheque and says – Fill it with the price that you are offering that will make me sign and drive the car out.

The salesman was stumped and the buyer negotiated almost 10% off the vehicle.

Debts are for businesses to quickly turnaround profits and not for building assets over 20 year loans. Try the no debt strategy, this means you will have money in your account you don’t know what to do with. This is the first step in being financially resilient, there is no pressure to pay huge bills month on month. The next thing is to resist the urge to spend and build up moveable assets. More on subsequent posts.

I am of the opinion that a tech interview needs no preparation apart from doing a great job in a setting similar to what we give an interview for. Doing a great job as a programmer involves a few major type of skills – Technical aptitude (Ability to learn something quick either from manuals, tutorials or peers), ability to work along with others, communication, fundamentals of programming like functional, oop, tdd.

Interviews have a problem “Like hires like”, if there are no checks and balances the entire organisation will converge to a narrow band of skilled people. Too much emphasis is placed on competitive coding and algorithms at many places. This is similar to hiring sprinters for your football team, they are fit and can run very fast, but they probably can’t play football or in a team setting well. This leads into a spiral of hiring more and more competitive coders and set the interview benchmark to hire similar people to do work that requires a lot of communication and co-ordination (teamwork).

This results in undue pressure in the industry, to be able to code competitively, the skillset which contributes only to a small portion of success in day to day work. Because of this, good application developers are left out from the hireable pool. The problem of this interview style is amplified by large new age companies who do not have a great product strategy but minting money through one or two cash cows and burning it in other engagements. This leads to headcount game to consume the budget, I have interacted with some developers who have cracked those tough interviews only to end up copying values from one spreadsheet/slide deck to another wasting their potential.

At the other end of the spectrum are interviews which are just fact based, this is done to reduce the amount of workload on technical interviewers by giving a template Q&A to recruiters who conduct the first round with strict matching of answers to the questions. This encourages rote memorisation especially for graduate interviewees without solid understanding of the fundamentals. Some organisations hire easily, but to staff on an assignment they interview people again internally, defeating the purpose of first interview in place.

Hiring is still a heuristics game, you catch a glimpse of the potential and continue with the person. To make the heuristics effective, interviews for developers need to have the following characteristics

• Have a diverse set of people in the panel, take the following into account – programming experience, relevant experience, management etc and huddle with the entire panel of all rounds to take a decision. This helps minimise ‘like hires like’ problem.
• Give more importance to design, architecture and clean coding skills than competitive coding. This will help in interviewing in the space that is closer to everyday work.
• Check feedback and communication skills by reviewing and extending functionality on a code. This ensures how well this person can be a team player and not a soloist.